


Wretched and Joyful

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [4]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Injury, Cannibalism, M/M, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 16:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16769131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: There's time for guilt later.





	Wretched and Joyful

Later, there will be plenty of time for David to fret and self-loathe and question the morality. In the moment, the choice is clearer than any crystal, and Hamid’s dithering over medical ethics fills David with a passionate, frustrated sort of rage.

“If he doesn’t get a transfusion  _ now _ , then he  _ dies _ !” David says, fighting to keep from raising his voice. All that time in the basement trading verbal barbs with Frank, as passionate as they could get, he’s still not good at this part. Playing at the calm, level-headed end of the argument, presenting himself as both passionate and yet not irrational in his investment. “You don’t get to decide him  _ maybe _ catching what I’ve got is worse than him  _ dying _ !”

“No! And we do not get to decide that it is better, either!” Hamid speaks just as passionately, obstinate for all that he was willing to accept a patient in his home, to triage a dying, condemned man -- willing to do everything to save his life but this. “This is meant to be his decision, and we cannot ask him. Even if he were to wake now, he is no position to make such a choice.”

It’s Dinah who speaks on David’s behalf, quiet and direct with her father. For all that Farah and Hamid have spoken together in soft, lyrical Farsi, Dinah sticks to English. David thinks it’s for his benefit, but it’s hard to tell with a woman like Madani. David also thinks her siding with him has less to do with saving Frank than it does with the fact that her murdered partner had also been infected, and that she is more sympathetic to the idea that the mutation wasn’t some kind of life ender. 

David’s blood looks like anyone else’s, dark, rich red flowing through the IV line, from David’s arm and into Frank’s. Life, he insists to himself; just like Frank had given of himself to keep David alive, now David gives of himself. He’s keeping Frank alive, whatever else may come of this -- surely living, even in this condition, was better than dying.

He’s thinking about the difference between selfless and selfish, the thin line and yawning gulf between the two, when Frank wakes up. He’s thinking about keeping and how it never works the way one wants without first letting go, when Frank drags himself out of bed. He’s thinking about all the ways one man can look after another, all the pain that goes into protecting, when he gives Frank a useless gift.

Pain, like his own heart really stopping, his left arm throbbing in time with his slow pulse, as he watches Frank leave. Dinah stands with him, cold comfort as she assures him that she will ensure justice is done by Frank.

David goes back to his family. They are warm, they are a relief, they are so happy, all of them, to see him. And even with all three of them piled on him, crowded into one bed, he feels cold, wondering how Frank is. Wondering if he’s even alive, chasing that bastard Russo down. He kisses his wife and holds his children and thinks about Frank, alone.

Sarah curls up against his chest, her arms around him like she’s always done, like he never left her. She kisses the crook of his arm, on the blackened bruise where the needle had bitten, and calls him brave, calls him good. She holds his face in her hands, her palms so hot against his cheeks. He wonders if he’ll ever see Frank again. 

When he does, days later, Frank looks like shit, and David feels a sick surge of guilt. Under all the bruises and cuts, Frank is ghost white. He is holding himself up seemingly by sheer force of will, and when David pulls him into the hotel room, he can feel the heat baking off him through his coat. Frank stands there shivering, sweating, and tells David that he’s cold.

Part of David wants to hate himself for that, because it’s not hard to figure out who’s fault it is that Frank should feel this way. It’s hard though, to hate himself too much -- because Frank is at least alive. He’s breathing in shuddery, tight little breaths, but he’s  _ breathing.  _

David guides him into the suite, past where Zach and Leo sit on the couch, making eye contact with Sarah that begs both understanding and forgiveness. She looks back with an understanding that is laced with pity, and he realizes that she knows more than he’s admitted. Par for the course, right? She was always better at reading him than he was.

He bundles Frank into the bed he and Sarah had been using, plugging in the electric blanket and wrapping Frank in it as he tries to curl, fully dressed, stripped only of his coat, on top of the covers. David wonders idly how Frank got past the security detail, figures that the lack of fresh blood on Frank is a sign that it mustn’t have been through violence. Frank is actually astonishingly clean, despite his wounds. 

“Lemme get your boots off,” David mutters, and Frank slowly extends his legs, like he’s too stiff, like it hurts. David knows it probably does -- when the virus was live in the system, working the mutation, the body went through all sorts of hell. He remembered vaguely thinking through the haze of a fever that if he could just get to the freeway, fall in front of a speeding semi, he’d feel better. Deader, sure, but better. The idea had been so insistent, so natural that it had felt correct. He tries not to imagine Frank allowing such a thing to happen to him as he carefully pulls off those boots, not wanting to twist too much. He sets them at the foot of the bed and tucks the blanket around Frank, who’s breathing has slowed but grown no less agonized for that, and goes back into the sitting room of the suite.

He doesn’t want to face Leo and Zach. By and large, they had accepted his status as infected with a sort of ignorance to his change. They pretend not to know, maybe for his benefit, maybe for their own. Leo had asked once, softly, frightened, if it would kill him, and he’d told her -- promised -- that he wouldn’t let it. That meant eating what he had to eat and pushing forward. 

There’s no circling this. When he shuts the bedroom door, Zach turns off the television, and all three of them turn their eyes on him. 

“Frank’s gonna be okay. He’s strong enough that the virus shouldn’t kill him. He’s just cold and it… hurts. Like a flu, aches and stuff in the muscles.”

The kids stare at him, and he can see the questions on their faces, none of which he wants to answer. Sarah slides off the corner of the couch and wraps him up in her arms, settling her head on his shoulder, giving and taking comfort. 

It’s Leo, of course, who asks, “How’d he get sick?”

“From me,” David puts his arm around Sarah and forces himself to smile, like this is easy, like any of it’s normal or okay. “I had to give him blood, and there was a risk, but there wasn’t really any other option.”

Zach’s face reads between anger and wary expectation, and David knows well enough, even though his only experience with this side of Zach, really, is through the cameras, that the kid is scared more than anything. Scared of another person he cares about being taken away. “So he’s a zombie now too,” he says, a question but not really. David knows he should tell him not to use that word -- it’s dehumanizing and cruel -- but he just grips Sarah’s shoulder when she sucks in an outraged breath, making her pause before she lays into Zach, and he nods. 

“I’m gonna sit with him, because I didn’t want to be alone when it was me and I don’t think he should be either. But I need you guys to stay out here until I say otherwise, okay?”

He sees Leo start to nod and Zach scowl as Sarah pulls away from David, moving back toward the couch, clearly ready to lecture. He doesn’t wait for any further acknowledgement of his request, just turns away and goes back into the bedroom. Back to Frank.

Already, the room reeks of Frank’s sweat. David thinks about cracking a window and decides it would only make the room colder, which would make Frank colder. And, he feels guilty thinking it, but an open fourth story window might seem like a tempting sort of invitation for Frank right now. Certainly it would have for David.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, David can’t help hoping that Frank will have drifted off. He can almost believe that’s the case, as still as Frank remains, as steady as the weak pulls of his breath are. He’s well aware though that it’s unlikely, taking his time toeing his sneakers off and then fretting for a few moments about whether he should get under the blankets with Frank or not.

The decision is made for him when Frank pointedly and with some effort lifts the edge of the blanket in invitation. Unwilling to leave him uncovered for long, David lays down behind Frank, just the way they had in the powerstation basement, when Frank had offered himself as a warm body for David to cling to, because he might be a bastard, but he didn’t see a point in making a man suffer for nothing if they were going to work together.

Had either of them ever really bought that? David sort of goes back and forth in his head on that. He’d wanted to -- Frank was dangerous, a killer and a prick, and David just wanted to go back to his family. His life was fucked up enough without bringing in his weird attraction to bruised-up bad boys. 

Of course, the fact remained that the attraction had been there, probably before he’d even gotten in touch with Frank properly. He’d seen him in video, watched his trial, knew the sort of shit he did and why. And David maybe had a type for the sort of guy he let stroll through his fantasies. 

It’s kind of sad, curling against Frank, feeling him shiver, feeling him twitch away from David’s cool arms, to think that this would be the last time Frank would be warm when he held him. The fever will burn it out of him and he’ll be as chilled as David. 

Through Frank’s shirt, which is thin, David can feel the marks he’d carved into Frank’s back. They’re neither of them properly healed, the marks deep. He kisses Frank’s shoulder, just above the newer mark, and Frank sighs, low and exhausted. His whole body trembles, and it’s not just cold that chases him. He’ll be nauseous by this point, the edges of that ever-present hunger started to build. His limbs will hurt, his eyes and his jaw too. All David can do is stay with him, hold him, remind him he’s not alone.

He expects Frank to accuse. To rage. To question. 

Frank lays there and slowly, somehow, sleep finds him. And David, David feels it dig into him too, dragging him down. There room is still half-lit, the sun edging toward setting but not quite low enough yet. Days, David realizes, are getting shorter. It’ll be cold again soon. Sarah will keep him warm, the way she has every winter they’ve been together since he was infected.

Who, David wonders, will keep Frank warm?

He falls asleep with Frank pressed into his chest; he dreams of a dark, still place, where he sits with his heartbeat as the only sound. Somewhere in the dark there begins another beat, fast at first, strong and powerful, steady as a drum. But that other beat slows and slows, faster than he can follow it, and he’s not altogether surprised to wake up in the dark, alone. 

There is a note sitting on the bedside table. “Thank you,” it says, “for not letting me die.”

David doesn’t know if the tears that come to him are relief or horror. 


End file.
